A rising consciousness concerning the proper handling and disposal of waste materials is occurring in people at every level of society. Among the most serious of the waste disposal problems is that of medical waste materials that potentially harbor infectious agents and diseases. Incidents of medical waste materials washing ashore along the coastlines and of bags of medical waste materials being dumped in ditches strike fear into the hearts of all people, causing an outcry for better controls.
Public opinion has caused a flurry of activity by legislators and regulators, particularly at the federal level, concerning the management of medical wastes. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Occupational, Safety and Health Act (OSHA) have issued management guidelines and regulations regarding medical wastes including the Medical Waste Tracking Act.
Medical wastes that potentially harbor infectious agents have been identified by the OTA as being generated by hospitals, clinics, doctor's offices, dentist's offices, veterinarian's offices, mortuaries, laboratories and other medical and research facilities. Recognized options for handling and managing these wastes include incineration, microwaving, autoclaving, chemical treatment, hydropulping and land disposal. Nearly 80% of the hospital generators in this country use or have access to some type of combustion system to incinerate these wastes.
Combustion of medical wastes has the unfortunate effect of releasing pollutants into the air. Of primary concern is the release to the atmosphere, from the medical waste combustors, the pollutants of Hydrogen Chloride (HCl), Sulfur Dioxide (SO.sub.2), particulate matter (PM), trace organics such as Dioxins and Furans, Arsenic (As), Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Mercury (Hg), Lead (Pb), and others. Many of the combustion systems that are in service do not adequately control these pollutants and are a cause for concern. This concern has been addressed by Section III of the Clean Air Act (CAA), and these regulatory standards may preclude the use of medical waste combustion at many installations by requiring extensive control measure to be added to combustion facilities.
Medical waste generation rates have doubled in the past decade with a 50% increase occurring in the past three years alone. The increase is due to factors such as the increasing use of disposable materials and the redefinition of the regulated waste fraction. As diseases such as AIDS receive increasing public attention, increasing pressure will be brought to bear on the generators of medical waste to the extent that anything that comes into contact with a patient or a patient's blood or bodily fluids will be classified and managed as being potentially infectious. This circumstance is called "Universal Precautions" by the CDC.
With such circumstances developing, hospital administrators are forced to conduct a balancing act within their systems to minimize medical waste amounts that are potentially infectious and that are the most costly to manage, by having their staff segregate wastes in multiple containers within hospital rooms and operating rooms. This can lead to arbitrary decisions as to what is infectious and what is not, and places an additional burden upon a staff that often works under crisis conditions. The concern, of course, is that incorrectly classified material may be incorrectly disposed of. Incorrect disposal could result in violations of the regulations for management of these wastes with severe fines being levied on the violator or, in the worst case, be the cause of an outbreak of an infectious agent functioning to contaminate people. However, to practice no segregation of materials and to classify all waste as potentially infectious would be economically prohibitive to a generator.
In light of this growing dilemma, it has become highly appropriate to strive for the perfection of a method and an apparatus for the processing of medical wastes into ordinary, common wastes so that these wastes may then be managed for disposal or recycling in the commonly accepted general waste disposal system without the threat of the spread of an infectious agent.